The Story So Far

Will thirteen-year-old Johnny Dixon suffer the same fate? Evaristus Sloane's robot can only be activated by human eyes, and the maniacal wizard has selected Johnny as the donor. When Johnny is kidnapped, Professor Childermass and Fergie race to Sloane's mansion, where they not only confront the evil magician, but also one of his most horrifying creations.

The Eyes of the Killer Robot (1986), by John Bellairs, is the fifth book in the Johnny Dixon series.

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Inside

Fergie played on, and Johnny walked away with his bunch of flowery purple plants. He was looking for a jar or a bucket to stick them in, and he had a vague idea that there might be one out behind the house. As he walked, he began to feel very odd. It seemed to him that the air had suddenly gotten chilly. And the sound of the harmonica grew fainter, as if Fergie were playing off in some distant place. Dreamily Johnny turned and stared at an old rusty drainpipe that ran down the back side of the house. Sure enough, there was a coffee can full of water under the drainpipe. He started to walk toward it, but he hadn't taken two steps when something made him turn.

Not far from the back door of the house stood a bench covered with peeling white paint. It was a garden seat, the kind people used to make so they could sit outdoors on hot summer nights. The bench stood in a patch of wild rosebushes not far from the rugged wall of the mountain, which towered overhead. A man was sitting on the bench -- a man Johnny had never seen before. He wore baggy, dusty overalls and a faded plaid shirt, and he had a big mop of straw-colored hair. The bunch of pieweed stalks fell from his numb fingers, and he took a couple of shuffling steps forward. And then, as Johnny watched, the man stood up. He took his hands away from his face and he stumbled. Johnny gasped in terror -- the man had no eyes. Streaks of blood ran down from empty black sockets.

"They took my eyes," the man moaned. "They took my eyes."

Johnny opened and closed his mouth, and made little whimpering noises. He shut his eyes tight to block out this horrible vision, and when he opened them again a second later, the man was gone.